Episode #106 – The Stronghold Of Rejection

(M) So for the last three days, in our Body-life, this has been exploding in different lives as the answer and breakthrough for numbers of people who can see it as the answer, the issue. People who know that God is good, but they can’t break through to receive. And so they defile many in their lives, even though in their head they know, but in their life and spirit they cannot come out of this prison. (J) The thing that I’m aware of is that you can’t see your own blessings. (M) Exactly, and you can’t receive them. (J) So you can’t receive them, even though they may be sitting there staring you in the face. You can’t receive them and you don’t, really you don’t see them. (M) And it’s worse than that John. When you’re in rejection and you, you destroy the blessings with your hatred of God. You don’t just let them sit there; you have to destroy them because the enemy’s hold on you is to murder you through your choice of rejection, and to murder everything around you. We’ve seen it in such vivid form in different lives. I’m thinking of this scripture, “The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty to the pulling down of strongholds.” (J) Well it’s very unusual to me that even Esau, what was his focus on? The blessing. (M) Yes. Ok, but I just noted when I read it for the first time, that he wanted to inherit the blessing, but he couldn’t because he didn’t receive that he was the ‘second choice’. (J) He didn’t ‘receive his life’, and so then he, he… But he was grasping for the blessing. (M) He was grasping for something that didn’t belong to him. It had been given… And I never saw that until I just now read it, that he never accepted that the blessing went to Jacob. We have… And that’s the great test of us in rejecting God, is He’s given you what I want. (J) Hmhmm. (M) Instead of… It’s a core thing that I learned really from Dr. Stanley years ago. He said when you see something in someone’s life, say ‘God, give me something like that that is mine’. But don’t covet what they have, that’s sin. (J) Hmhmm. (M) There’s a godly envy John, and there’s an ungodly envy. Jealousy, selfish-ambition, wants what you have and will kill you, or kill it, as best they can to get it. But godly envy is, oh that evokes in me a hunger for that aspect, or that gifting, or that wisdom, whatever it is, I want something like that that God would give me. I don’t want yours. I don’t want to kill what you’ve got. But I want mine. (J) And the amazing thing is that you never, though you want it, you never want to pay the price for it. And ah, willing to kill, and make sure they don’t have it as well. (M) Yes, in fact Dr. Stanley mentioned that too. He said don’t envy something that a person has gained when you are not willing to pay the same price for that, for that achievement. (J) Right. (M) Thank you, he mentioned that and I hadn’t… (J) It’s just a truth of life, and evident by those who are coveting the blessing but unwilling to pay the price for the blessing; want the spiritual growth, want the spiritual life, want the whatever they want, ah, but are unwilling to do the work. (M) You’re always aware of that John. You really are always aware of that, that there’s a price. (J) And the entitlement; the entitlement to think that because you have it and I see it I deserve it, so give it to me or I’ll destroy it in your life. (M) Hmhmm. Well this is the scripture God’s bringing to mind, “We walk in the flesh, but we do not war according to the flesh.” This is 2 Cor.10:3-4-5 and 6 in the Amplified. “For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh”, and my memory is it’s not carnal, “but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses” or strongholds. “We are destroying every speculation, speculations, and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God”, indicative of pride, “and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. And we’re ready to punish all disobedience whenever your obedience is complete. You are looking at things as they are outwardly.” See, ok, let’s go back. That scripture says we have weapons that are mighty to the puling down of strongholds. They’re not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. I was reading the New American; let me read from the Amplified. “Though we live in the world we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” Now John, I used to think how could you take every thought captive. It is possible; it wouldn’t be there if it weren’t possible. But you see, the weapons we fight with are what? The victory of Christ; He has won over… He has annulled the covenant with death; the cross did it. He has defeated Satan. And any stronghold of Satan, even in another person, we can demolish. And the word demolish indicates in the Greek, if I remember right, reducing something to powder and dust. So the moment we say I demolish that stronghold the enemy has built, I destroy it in the name of Jesus and by His blood, it is destroyed. I watched it happening in three peoples lives in the last three days. I watched the explosion of the revelation of the goodness of God; I watched them know the name of their prison and how they had lived within it. And that was just our Body-life. We, we don’t fight with the arguments that rise up against the knowledge of God are the whispers of the enemy. And we can demolish those. (J) Hmhmm. (M) And the stronghold it built, it’s a fortress; it’s literally a fortress in the spiritual realm. We built it, but we can tear it down. It takes years to build, faith and one second to tear it down. And I watched it happen in three people’s lives and I’m anticipating others that we’ve prayed for that we will see the evidence of it. It’s the turn-around of an entire nation really; that’s how big I believe it is. So the effect of ‘the great lie’ is to reject God. I think I need to write another booklet as a sequel. So the covenant with death is to reject God wouldn’t you say. I remember years ago you heard some tapes about rejection that impacted you powerfully. And they dealt with it as I remember with the spirit of rejection, but not with the source and core of it. So it had some measure of freedom for you, but I believe this is the getting down to the root of the bitterness. (J) Hmhmm. (M) This is the root of bitterness: it’s the rejection of God by rejecting your parents, your ‘self’, your life, your circumstances, even rejecting the sins that are yours. And see, the most amazing thing to me is that God wants us, that’s part of ‘the great lie’. He wants us; He wants us badly enough that He gave His only begotten Son. And has through that, not just that scripture that we know so well, but through His Son He gave us literally the power to accept Him in Jesus. (J) And His choices. (M) And His choices. It’s called grace. See in Hebrews it says, “See to it that no one forfeits the grace of God”. We have grace given to us to both endure, to live and to be, what God wants us to be. And it doesn’t really matter what’s happened to us. (J) Yeah, I was reading second Timothy today and how he, Paul at the beginning just prays for him mercy, grace and peace. And you know, he had to, he was, he was literally saying I want these imparted into your life because I know you’re going to need the grace to accept your life. (M) Hmhmm. (J) And the mercy to accept your life and the peace to continue with your life. (M) And see there is no peace in the stronghold of rejection, absolutely none, its torment; it’s absolute torment. And when we assume complete responsibility and see it by its name, then there is tremendous freedom and a whole new world opens up to you outside that prison. A whole new ‘seeing’, it’s all in what you see; it’s all in how you see and if you can see. And if you are in darkness you cannot, you really cannot see. (J) Well the proof of these lives who have gone through this rejection and come through to the other side; David, David was rejected by his brothers and his father. (M) Oh, my father and mother have forsaken me and God shall take me up. (J) Right. Timothy, everything I’ve heard that you know that he was raised by his mother and grandmother, and not his father, you know that’s what I’ve always heard. I don’t know about that, so I, you know I don’t know what, but he had a, he had an issue with his stomach, probably an IBS issue; so ah, that would tell me that he had some kind of parental issue. (M) Some kind of anxiety. (J) Yeah, yeah. And so, but he came through the rejection and into a glorious place. Everybody who was in the Word that was really outstanding, all had to come from that rejection, through the rejection and reject the rejection and go to God. (M) Yeah. And you know if Timothy was without a father, did not God give him the most choice father in all the world. (J) I read this morning, I hadn’t even read this before, but in second Timothy it talks about how Timothy wept because he was leaving, because Paul was leaving. So he did, he got a good Papa. (M) If he had rejected the story of his life he would never have seen Paul as the compensation of God. I know a man who lived to be 84, who never accepted that he was an orphan and he never really received the wonderful marvelous Christian family God gave him, never received them. And he lived his life believing that he had a deficit and that he was unwanted. And that adopted family just showered him with love and acceptance, but he could not see it because he had rejected his own story instead of receiving his journey. And that’s what we do, we can live and die in the stronghold and never see. (J) The evidence of both is very evident. You know, I mean, we see those that have rejected their lives and rejected their story and perished. And then we’ve seen those who embraced their life and who’ve become glorious. (M) I’m thinking of Daniel because I’m on him right now in the “Manna” and in the “Tape of the Month”, and you showed me on the website these volumes I’ve written about Daniel; he must be one of my hero’s. But he had to work through those issues in secret. We do not know all he went through to resolve it. But we know that he bowed and worshipped three times a day, that would help. (J) Or Joseph, there’s another one. (M) Yes, exactly. Whose… Daniel’s rejection was not personal and blame, it was simply the judgment of God, but Joseph’s was personal by name, among his brothers. And then, then even Potiphar rejected him. Even the dream he interpreted, the man he helped, rejected him. And rejection is going to hound your path. I can tell you that. I can vouch for that in forty years of walking with the Lord. Rejection is a huge factor, because the Lord promises, the world hated Me, you’ve got to know it’s going to hate you. If you were of the world the world would love you as its own. But since you’re not of the world, the world will hate you. And that is rejection. It’s a, a life-long experience of humanity and you have to ah, you have to be careful that you don’t build the rejection of God through it.

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